Kerygma and Myth 10: Karl Barth, 'Rudolf Bultmann - An Attempt to Understand Him'

Karl Barth, 'Rudolf Bultmann - An Attempt to Understand Him', in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. by Hans-Werner Bartsch, trans. by Reginald H. Fuller, (London: S.P.C.K., 1972). vol. II, pp. 83-132.

Barth's analysis is perhaps what you might expect. He does not share Bultmann's existential philosophy and thinks that this has caused Bultmann to arbitrarily cut up the New Testament. He feels that the New Testament should be approached with more openness, in order that one might be confronted by the Word. Barth seems to be sceptical of Bultmann's dread of the supernatural, although it is not this that he concentrates on in his critique. Primarily he wishes to assert Christology. He sees that Bultmann only has room for this in so far as it is derived from soteriology. Christ is alive - not in a kerygma, but in the flesh! This is the living object of faith.

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Barth uses the phrase 'once for every Now' to describe the eschatological (timeless?) event of God's word, as understood by Bultmann. It carries the significance of the two parties involved in action of God's word. (p. 85)

Barth takes exception that Kerygma produces primarily 'self-understanding'. 'How can I understand and explain my faith, of all things, unless I turn away from myself and look to where the message I believe in calls me to look?' (p. 86) The essential complaint here is that Bultmann's language, at least, looks dangerously like navel-gazing. Of course, Bultmann is driven by his conviction that there is no object for us to gaze upon other than as he is at work in us and meets us in the Kerygma.

In contrast to Bultmann's desire to demythologise and interpret radically, to perform sachkritik, Barth wants us to meet with Christ in the text. 'Does not what the New Testament says in its particular historical form, or rather, does not he who meets me as I read it, stand out in almost every verse, in gigantic proportions? Does not it - or he - continually cry out for a new enquiry about himself?' (p. 87)

Bultmann is only able to perform such radical surgery because of his confidence of what is in the New Testament. In other words, he already knows what it is he wants us to translate. (p. 88)
[What if he is wrong?]

Next Barth turns to Bultmann's subjectivism. 'First, as hearers of the message, we experience ourselves as we were and are, and as we ought to be and shall be. Next, through faith in the message, we experience ourselves in transition from the one state to the other. Finally, we experience ourselves in the process of this transition as objects of God's saving act, or concretely in our being in Christ.' (p. 91) 'But does the New Testament begin with man's subjective experiences, with man as the recipient of its message? ... Is this not this reversing the New Testament? ... The contours of New Testament thought are often different from and even the reverse of what modern man is used to.' (p. 92)
[So, demythologise it. :)]

'For in describing sin abstractly, apart from what God has done to remove it, he is, by and large, following the line of orthodoxy.' (p. 93)
[I'm not sure Barth is being complementary here.]

To describe the Christian life as 'detachment from the world' is 'formal, legalistic and cold'. (p. 94)

'How can we expound the New Testament if we relegate God's saving act which is the foundation of Christian existence to a secondary position? How can we do it if we understand God's saving act only as a reflection in the mirror of Christian existence?' (p. 94)

'That Christ is the kerygma is what the New Testament appears to say, not that Christ is the kerygma.' (p. 96)

'Is the kerygma, thus conceived, a gospel - a kerygma in which nothing is said of that in which or of him in whom its recipients are to believe? What is it but a new law? ... How far does this kerygma really speak, as the kerygma is intended to speak, of an act of God? How far does it speak rather of an act of man (strictly speaking), of the transition which man achieved by his own obedience - though he is supposed not to be capable of it?' (p. 97)
[Slightly ungenerous. It is fair to say that Bultmann thinks no salvation is possible outside of this act of God, although of course there is no work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration.]

Bultmann presents the cross as of cosmic significance: 'But I do not see why it only acquires this significance by being taken up into the kerygma and evoking the obedience of faith. On the contrary, it seems to me that the New Testament describes the cross of Christ as an event with an inherent significance on its own. It is just because it has this inherent significance that it can become significant in the kerygma and for the faith of its recipients.' (p. 98)
[Bultmann's philosophy simply will not allow him to make such 'mythological statements'. They are meaningless to him.]

'For the New Testament asserts that in faith the believer attaches himself to something which is wholly and entirely outside himself, something without him and in spite of him, something which took place for him on God's initiative in the death of Jesus Christ.' (p. 99)

Bultmann (p. 41): '"The saving efficacy of the cross is not derived from the fact that it is the cross of Christ: it is the cross of Christ because it has this saving efficacy." ... I should find it difficult to expound it in any sense consistent with the New Testament message.' (p. 100)

Of Christ's 'raising into the Easter faith': 'Nothing can be said about it as the foundation and content both of faith and of the kerygma. And, therefore, nothing can be said about the risen Christ as such. He is not allowed any life of his own after he rose from the dead.' (p. 101)

Barth is quite frank about physical resurrection. He speaks of 'space and time' and of the risen Christ's teaching of the apostles. Christ's resurrection must come before our raising to new life in him, because ours is entirely dependent on his prior act.

Bultmann does emphasise that the act of God is the history of Christ, but is he then being inconsistent? Can an act of God be anything other than mythological in his understanding? (p. 102)

Ironically: 'For it is historical analysis which provides him with the clue to the common features in these various elements.' (p. 105)

'Let me repeat that he does not deny, eliminate, or expunge them from the kerygma, except those elements which are untranslatable, such as the three-storied universe, Satan and the demons, the angels, the virgin birth, the empty tomb and the ascension [Is he being sarcastic?]. He interprets them.' (p. 105)

'The New Testament message ... is a mythological expression of a distinctive human self-understanding.' (p. 106)

'I wonder what voice from heaven it was that led him to choose this crude definition of myth.' (p. 109)

'Is the demythologized kerygma allowed to say anything about God's having condescended to become this-worldly, objective and - horror of horrors! - datable?' (p. 109)

'I cannot deny that this demythologized New Testament looks suspiciously like docetism.' (p. 111)

p. 112 contains a wonderfully sarcastic description of the convenience of finding that both myth and message of the New Testament permit, indeed demand, anthropological interpretation.

Barth is suspicious of the enthusiasm for Heidegger which underlies much here. He does not hate the philosophy, but simply cannot see it as universally encompassing. Yes, Augustine was a Neo-platonist and Aquinas an Aristotelian, but is really this philosophy the philosophy par excellence of our day and age?
[Not of this day and age, that's for sure.]

Does existentialism make us too 'narrow-minded' when we read the text? (p. 126)